jlund/masscan — explained in plain English
Analysis updated 2026-07-17 · repo last pushed 2013-09-16
Find every device on a corporate network with a specific open port like port 80.
Scan the entire internet for exposed services for security research.
Map large networks quickly to identify open ports across many machines.
| jlund/masscan | acc4github/kdenlive-omnifade | aggarg/lab-project-freertos-fat | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stars | — | 0 | — |
| Language | C | C | C |
| Last pushed | 2013-09-16 | — | 2024-01-08 |
| Maintenance | Dormant | — | Dormant |
| Setup difficulty | moderate | moderate | moderate |
| Complexity | 4/5 | 2/5 | 3/5 |
| Audience | ops devops | general | developer |
Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.
Requires careful transmit rate configuration to avoid overwhelming network hardware, may need specialized drivers to bypass the OS networking stack.
Masscan is a tool that finds open ports on computers across a network, really fast. It can scan the entire internet in under six minutes, sending out 10 million probe packets per second. If you've ever used nmap to check which ports are open on a server, this does the same thing, just orders of magnitude quicker. The reason it's so fast comes down to how it sends and receives probes. Traditional scanners send a probe, wait for a response, then send the next one. Masscan instead fires off probes continuously without waiting for replies, using separate threads for sending and receiving. It also randomizes the order of addresses it scans so no single network gets overwhelmed by the traffic. At the engineering level, it uses encryption to shuffle a simple counter into random IP-and-port combinations, and it can bypass the operating system's networking stack entirely when paired with specialized drivers and hardware. The people who'd use this are security researchers, network administrators, or anyone who needs to map large networks quickly. For example, if you wanted to find every device on a corporate network with port 80 open (the standard web port), you could point it at a range like 10.0.0.0/8 and get results in seconds. At the extreme end, researchers use it to scan the whole internet for exposed services, though the README warns that scanning the internet carelessly can get you banned by networks that don't appreciate being probed. One notable tradeoff: masscan prioritizes raw speed over the deeper features of a tool like nmap. It won't resolve DNS names, detect operating systems, or do service fingerprinting the way nmap can. It also requires care with transmit rates, by default it's throttled to 100 packets per second, and the README emphasizes that cranking it up can overwhelm your own network hardware. It offers config files, output in XML or binary format, and the ability to split scans across multiple machines for even more speed.
Masscan is a high-speed network port scanner that finds open ports across networks up to 10 million probes per second. It can scan the entire internet in under six minutes.
Mainly C. The stack also includes C.
Dormant — no commits in 2+ years (last push 2013-09-16).
Setup difficulty is rated moderate, with roughly 30min to a first successful run.
Mainly ops devops.
This repo across BitVibe Labs
double-check against the repo, no cap.